Capstone Week 10: The Great Dialogue Lull

Cover art of the re-released edition.

I’ve been spending my time, outside of schoolwork, workwork and Halloween prep, converting all of the dialogue in my episode 1 demarcation of the book into proper script-dialogue and plotting out the scenes. I don’t have much else to report at this point, I haven’t had much time to give the new material I’ve been handed the reading it deserves, and although my final ILL book arrived it might as well have been lost in transit for all the help it contains.

I have noticed I’ve become better at understanding screenplays, though, especially in their structure. One of my classes is a creative writing workshop, and when one of the other students gave us all a screenplay to review, I realized that the big problem with it was that the conflict didn’t follow after the introduction of the characters, and if that were fixed everything else would fall into place. In a fit of rare luck, I was able to explain this to the writer and how they could straighten the backbone of the script so that the beginning and end were the same but the driving force of the story was constant, and they were so impressed they took notes for the sake of editor-chiropracty.

It wasn’t until then, seeing their reaction, that I appreciated how much I’ve learned in the last few weeks, and how much I’ve retained on top of that. When I graduate I’m going to have to do all of my learning this way, and it’s been an encouraging dip into autodidactery.

Better updates forthcoming, once the uninteresting writerly bits have been properly tended.